What do museum visitors associate with learning in school and learning in museums?

The present study was conducted in the Deutsches Museum in Munich, the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt am Main and the Landesmuseum Schloss Gottorf in Schleswig. 160 museum visitors were asked about their conceptions of learning in school and learning in a museum. These conceptions generate a persons' individual concept of learning. It is formed by the influence of the subjectively different experiences each person makes in varying learning situations. Since every learning environment offers different opportunities and possibilities for learning, it can be assumed that there are location-specific concepts of learning. The results of this study show that concepts of learning in school can be differentiated from concepts in a museum; albeit reactive and constructive concepts of learning were found for schools as well as for museums. In addition it was found that different people's concepts of learning depend on their places of learning.